There’s something deeply satisfying about watching a small team of developers take on tech giants. This week, I’ve been following the progress of ZLUDA, a project that’s attempting to bring CUDA compatibility to non-Nvidia GPUs, and it’s got me thinking about the stranglehold that monopolies have on innovation—and how sometimes, the most important breakthroughs come from the most unlikely places.

For those not familiar with the technical details, CUDA is Nvidia’s proprietary platform for GPU computing. It’s everywhere in AI, scientific computing, and high-performance applications. The problem is, if you want to run CUDA code, you need Nvidia hardware. Period. This has created a situation where Nvidia doesn’t just dominate the GPU market—they’ve effectively locked it down.